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Medium Mk. A Whippet

RichB

Well-known member
This is Meng's release, coming out just after Takom's.

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Meng worked closely with The Tank Museum at Bovington during development of the kit, measuring the Whippet on display and having access to original source documents.

First look, the kit is well moulded and nicely detailed. There is no PE included with the kit. Construction consists of 16 steps and looks like it should build up quickly (famous last words).

Two colour schemes are detailed in the instructions, "Firefly" as displayed at the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels, Belgium and "Caesar II" as displayed at Bovington. The decal sheet includes additional markings for British tanks "Clara" and "The Musical Box", a captured German Tank and a captured Soviet tank. Additional research will be required if doing any of these bonus schemes.

Cheers,
Rich
 
Construction begins with....the hull. Bet you thought it was going to say road wheels like most kits do. The main hull and engine compartment comes moulded as one piece simplifying construction and ensuring everything is square. There are no seams or flash and is very crisply moulded.

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The fighting compartment is made up of flat panels. Some of them have V-grooves on the back to allow them to be bent into shape, again simplifying construction and helps keep things square. Meng would have you align the panels with the hull. I used the cab roof to get the angles right.

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There is some basic details on the interior around the gun ports and on the door and hatch but there are a lot of ejector marks and panel joins should an interior be added.

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I've left off the engine deck grab handles and the Hotchkiss MG's for now so I don't break them off.

So far fit has been excellent and no major seams to fill. Getting thru the first six steps has taken about 2 hours at the bench.

Next up, the running gear.

Cheers,
Rich
 
This is a pretty easy build and I think better then Takoms offering. I just wish instead of museum tanks they had offered some other options.
Watching with interest.
James
 
Whippet! Whippet good. :tomato

I just couldn't go with out some silly pun.

I does look like a real nice kit.
 
A couple more hours has yielded a nice pile of wheels, 2 x Drive Sprocket assemblies, 2 x Idlers, 14 x Road Wheel B, 18 x Road Wheel A and 10 x Return Rollers.

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Added the crew compartment to the hull as well. Time to deviate from the instructions a bit. Instead of building the sponsons as separate sub-assemblies, I've attached the inner panel to the hull and then glued the mud chutes in place. The wheels can be left free to rotate but I will likely bond them in place.

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The infantry figure gives an idea of the size of the tank, 2-3 ft larger in length, width and height than the Renault FT.

Cheers,
Rich
 
Running gear glued in place.

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Hardest part is making sure the Type A & B Road Wheels are in the proper order.

And now we hide it all with the outer panels.

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If you were to display the kit with a thrown track, inside detail would be good. There are some ejector marks to remove that could be visible thru the mud chutes, more if the track is off. There are a few sink marks on some of the road wheels that will only be visible without the track in place.

Just a few detail bits to add, build up the tracks and we'll be ready for paint.

Cheers,
Rich
 
The Whippet also returned to the bench this week. Added the canvas track guards made from 0.010" sheet with a single ply of tissue (unused :) ) secured with Tamiya liquid glue. The added bolt heads on the support angles are from Meng. Glued the MG's in place and assembled the tracks. Each link is a single piece and they just click together. There is an ejector mark on the back of each link, but does not need to be cleaned up unless you are showing a thrown track or really enjoy sanding and filing 136 track links.


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Cheers,
Rich
 
It looks really nice all primered up. (It looked good before too).
These new kits are such an improvement over the Emhar offerings that now inhabit my stash.
Looking forward to your next posts.

Cheers,

Bill
 
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